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Why I'm Choosing to Bank My Baby's Cord Blood

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by Word of Mom Blogger on February 21, 2013

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Tracy is the VP of Consumer Insights at Everyday Health and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter and a baby on the way (they've decided to be surprised about gender but their firstborn is insisting that it's a girl).

I remember back in 2008, when I was six months pregnant with my daughter, I got an email from a friend about cord blood banking. I hadn't really thought about it much and my husband and I hadn't discussed it yet.

The email was simple. Our friends would get a year of storage free if we signed up. Now, I have to admit, I like refer-a-friend programs. Everyone wins. Being in the marketing business, I know the power of recommendations by people you trust. This was the first seed I needed to start my research. I had a lot of questions though. Was it really worth the money? What results have the companies seen? How secure is the storage facility in case of a disaster? What happens if they were to go out of business? And how do the companies compare? Okay, not a lot of questions but some big ones to us.

While I spent time online looking up information about cord blood banking and searching forums for what moms were saying, I have to be honest, I didn't do a lot of research on the specific companies. Our friends are analysts. That's what they do. They weigh the pros and cons of companies. So when I asked why they had chosen Cord Blood Registry (CBR) I was satisfied with their answer — I can't remember exactly what they said but it had something to do with reputation, the fact that their facility was in the middle of nowhere in Arizona (it's actually in Tuscon), and they had a connection to the University of Arizona.

Based on what we read and heard this seemed like the right company for us and it was just a matter of signing up.

Fast forward three months later to week 36. I realized we hadn't done anything about signing up. We had good intentions but the mere growing of a baby, crazy work schedules, and pregnancy brain got in the way. I called up CBR in a panic. Could they get me a kit in time? What would I need to do? And we had other questions like, what do I have to tell my doctor? Will she know what to do? What do we do with the kit once it's collected? Is it complicated? How will they get it? The rep made the process easy. Our doctor knew about cord blood banking and all we had to do was bring the kit to the hospital and give it to the doctor and make a phone call once the baby arrived for pick up. The kit was delivered overnight. Thankfully, we had it because my water broke two weeks early.

While I was in charge of the delivery of the baby, my husband was responsible for the delivery of the cord blood. He double checked to make sure the doctor knew we were collecting and he made the call for pick up.

Unlike our daughter who took 18 hours to arrive, CBR was there in what seemed like an hour. And in the wee hours, no less.

What got me the most about using CBR is that one year later on my daughter's birthday they sent the book, Where Is Baby's Belly Button? by Karen Matz, along with a birthday card. I know it was a little thing but it left a huge impression.

Now it's almost four years later and my second baby is due in April. I decided to plan ahead this time and ordered my kit during my second trimester. I was surprised to learn about new advances, including the collection of stem cell tissue. That wasn't available for our first child. Our kit came in the mail and our daughter wanted to know who the gift was for.

I've asked friends who have recently had babies if they banked their cord blood and the responses have been mixed. Some have, some never even thought about it and one friend decided to use a public bank.

Obviously, we hope we never need to use it but for us, we like knowing it's out there in Arizona and I'm looking forward to getting another copy of Where is Baby's Belly Button? as our daughter loved the first one to pieces.

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